When bears don’t mosh, they rummage through some thrash. Will the return of Hirax induce some bear-fisted action, or will they leave Bobo hanging in the trash pit?
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Lord Agheros – Anhedonia Review
Anhedonia clearly stretches the black metal genre tag a very long way. Yes, you can hear practices inherited from black metal bands in Lord Agheros’ work, but they’re all quite divorced from the traditional framework. Yet without using that genre tag, without expressing a desire to belong to that movement, I’d have maybe missed this and that’d have been a shame.
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Putred – Megalit Al Putrefacției Review
You see, Putred’s very name suggests all the adjectives I’ll be wanting for their brand of death metal. Words like filthy, nasty, foul, and gruesome. Let’s decompose.
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Mutagenic Host – The Diseased Machine Review
It’s a brand new year. The sun’s shining, birds are chirping, and – wait, what’s that smell? A new pile of stinky hardcore-infused death metal, of course. Mutagenic Host, after releasing one demo, lurch back onto the scene nearly five years later with their debut full length The Diseased Machine. So, are your playlists ready to fire this machine up and see what spits out?
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The Halo Effect – March of the Unheard Review
Stretching beyond melodeath’s greatest works is a long tail of releases that are banal, toothless, or some combination thereof. In theory, The Halo Effect’s roster of In Flames alumni fronted by Dark Tranquillity’s Mikael Stanne is great news for people hoping for more gems. But if you can hear their riffs from a mile away, how can their march be so silent?
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The Cimmerian – An Age Undreamed Of Review
The promo describes The Cimmerian as a doom/thrash band, and given Peat regards regard those two genres as going in two opposite directions, he was really curious to see just how exactly that would work. Is this genre fusion or just another midlife crisis?
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Fellowship – The Skies Above Eternity Review
Fellowship’s The Saberlight Chronicles carried the flag high for those hoping to sing and gallop not with challenge but with a smile. And though I’m not typically one to fall for such gallivanting, their underlying talents give me hope in a way that their music does not. But with The Skies Above Eternity boasting both a trimmed runtime and darker narrative promise, can it turn my worm to weenie in its glory?
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Gaerea – Coma Review
At this point, Gaerea have become a band with expectations. And yet, somehow, Coma is my first Gaerea album, my first listen to what this Portuguese black metal powerhouse and their cathartic take on the genre has to offer.
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Ploughshare – Second Wound Review
Albums sometimes communicate things to Scuttlegoat before he has even heard them. Sometimes this is done via the promo blurb telling him to be wary. Other times, a combination of album cover, album and track titles will tell him what to expect. While more casual metal listeners often sneer about anything that pushes beyond the 5 minute mark, to Scuttlegoat colossal song lengths might also communicate to seasoned metal listeners like himself that the album at hand is advanced listening or at least making an attempt at being a more profound, distinguished work.
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Crypts of the Unknown: Khonsu – The Xun Protectorate
